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Competing complexity metrics and adults' production of complex sentences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Hintat Cheung  and
Susan Kemper
Hintat Cheung
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Susan Kemper*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
*
Susan Kemper, 1082 Robert Dole Human Development Center, Child Language, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045
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Abstract

The adequacy of 11 metrics for measuring linguistic complexity was evaluated by applying each metric to language samples obtained from 30 different adult speakers, aged 60–90 years. The analysis then determined how well each metric indexed age-group differences in complexity. In addition, individual differences in the complexity of adults' language were examined as a function of these complexity metrics using structural equation modeling techniques. In a follow-up study, judges listened to sentences in noise, rated their comprehensibility, and attempted to recall each sentence verbatim. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to evaluate the structural equation model, derived from the language samples, with respect to sentence comprehensibility and recall. While most of the metrics provided an adequate account of age-group and individual differences in complexity, the amount of embedding and the type of embedding proved to predict how easily sentences are understood and how accurately they are recalled.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , January 1992 , pp. 53 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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